SD not currently ready for an Olympics

FILE - In this July 28, 2012 file photo, British children pose for photos under a sculpture of the Olympics rings, in Coventry, England. Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington are the cities still in the running for a possible U.S. bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
The Associated Press

FILE - In this July 28, 2012 file photo, British children pose for photos under a sculpture of the Olympics rings, in Coventry, England. Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington are the cities still in the running for a possible U.S. bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

It’s hard to understand why San Diego didn’t make the final four among U.S. cities bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. What, was it because the USOC didn’t believe Mesa College’s Merrill Douglas Stadium was big enough to house the Opening Ceremonies?

Sad to say. We. Do. Not. Have. It.

Look, I always applaud the dreamers, the visionaries we’ve lacked seemingly since Alonzo Horton decided this was a nice place to buy up property. Therefore, Vincent Mudd, who has chaired the San Diego 2024 Exploratory Committee, is to be congratulated.

He’s trying to live a dream, has worked hard at it, and that’s great. Here’s hoping he doesn’t give up in a town that can bury dreamers.

But given who we are, and what we have been for so long, San Diego didn’t stand a chance against finalists L.A., San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C. We simply don’t have the venues, and the prospect of this city having enough of them by 2024 had to be viewed by the USOC as impossible.

Maybe the USOC noticed we can’t get a new football stadium built, or that the one in which our current NFL team plays is a dump, allowed to deteriorate by City Hall slumlords. Maybe the new cast of downtown characters, headed by freshly minted Mayor Kevin Faulconer -- who appears to have a spine -- will change all that without sticking their tails firmly between their legs and running off to a safe place to get re-elected.

But how could the USOC possibly gamble on anything getting done here by 2024? It couldn’t.

It cost London a reported $15 billion to host the 2012 Summer Games, and so much of what was built will be of no use now. Russia supposedly spent $45 billion on the recent Sochi Winter Games, although nothing there came close to resembling that figure, so we have to wonder where all that money went, into whose pockets.

Things don’t figure to get cheaper by 2024 for cities without facilities. Where were we going to find the dough? If it had to, L.A. could even host the 2016 Games without having to do much (as it didn’t have to in 1984). San Diego couldn’t. Empty promises don’t work for the greedy, and you don’t get much greedier than the hypocritical lords of the rings.

By that time, we would need two large stadiums -- one for football, if the Chargers were still in town -- and the other for Opening Ceremonies/track and field. NFL stadiums can’t have tracks running around them.

Plus, unlike some of the other bidding cities, San Diego doesn’t have one large, on-campus stadium that can be used for soccer, etc. It’s hard to imagine the Sports Arena still will be around by 2024. SDSU’s Viejas Arena is fine, but it seats 12,414, USD’s Jenny Craig Pavilion 5,100.

We don’t have enough stuff. We’re hard to gamble on. Maybe we will be, but not now, and that’s what matters to the people trying to get another Olympics to the United States. The USOC can’t go into that meeting throwing pies in the sky.

Exiled mayor Bob Filner’s notion of having a 2024 San Diego/Tijuana Games was a terrible idea. He even kept pursuing it for a time after the Olympic people told him there were three chances -- slim, none and fat -- of it happening. There are enough security problems at Olympics without having to cross international borders -- and this one is the busiest in the world.

I can see San Diego hosting an Olympics one day. Probably not in my lifetime, but some day. We do have a lot of things. We wouldn’t have to build anything for water or beach activities, that’s for sure. We have the hotel rooms. We have the weather. San Diego is a destination city.

We should be ready for this. But we’re not.

Still, here’s hoping Mudd and his associates keep trying. Maybe by 2032 the politicians and major players will realize we’re not a sleepy little Navy town anymore.

By then, we may have the legs to carry a body that became too heavy too quickly.